Professor Quinn A. B. Smith is possibly the most English Austrian you'll ever meet. His eccentric father was a great supporter of the realm of Albion, despite being a noble of Austria, and did his utmost to pass his love onto his son. Quinn has been educated by the best English teachers, married to a nice English Dame, and, when the time came, sent to the best English University.

Some ten years on he has yet to leave. He likes Oxford academic life far to much to return to some smallish town on the continent, despite the fact he's now Baron of it. His skill in invention has secured him a cushy job as leader of the (really very small) Department of (Experimental) Supernatural Development of Cain's Collage. He has even impressed the king with his ingenious-sounding conversation securing himself an advisory role to the crown (Favoured of the King). Occasional reserch jaunts allow him to keep collecting strange and, well, strange devices, and his study of the great inventor Franzberg is finally promising results!

«An extract from a biographical pamphlet of the late Dr. Quinn A. B. Smith, Viscount of Cwmdauddwr»

Chapter 8: The Tragic Demise of Quinn Smith

In his later years, Quinn Smith spent vast quantities of his time perusing his research into artificial life. He was most interested in creating a being like that of Nathaniel Medici - an artificial body capable of containing a human soul.

His movements over the period of the early 1650’s are rather strange. It is known he, and his assistant Millie, took many journeys with Medici and Mistress Annwn, a witch also interested in the creation of life. His research progressed in leaps and bounds, seemingly stimulated by the inspiration of the lost City of Atlantis. He made amazing progress.

However, it was these trips which eventually lead to his downfall. Quinn often joked to his associates that he was amazed his luck had held for so long; maybe things finally began catching up with him. When he returned from a research trip, he found his Manor deserted, with a single letter on the front door. In it, his beloved wife, Dame Mary Smith, declared she was sick of the constant rumours about Millie. Sick of having a husband who ignored her, and sick of living a lie. During his trips, she had found love with a local woman, and they had left for Italy. She did not want him to try to find them. Quinn was destroyed. Over the following months he withdrew entirely to his Laboratory in the remote valleys. He cut of contact with his research associates, and seemingly forgot his plans for an artificial being. He resigned his post at the university. He stopped attending court. Indeed his servants claim that after a few weeks he relied on Millie to bring his meals to him in the lab.

It can now be revealed that Quinn threw himself into his work. First he planned to create a device to make his wife love him. However he realized that this would probably destroy the love his wife shared with another, and would force her to live an even bigger lie. He could not live with this, and so instead designed a device to remove from himself the feeling of love, and thus the pain attached.

The device, fashioned from a permutation of the device, once planned to manipulate the human soul, was built using a Franzbergian clock as a power source. Maybe it was this, maybe Quinn’s lack of skill in Grace, maybe Quinn’s luck finally ran out, but the device malfunctioned. Quinn staggered from the machine, and revealed that it had worked. He no longer felt anything at all. He died in the arms of his assistant, looking up into her eyes.

It is said his last words, engraved upon his gravestone, just outside the Cain’s College cemetery, were, ‘Vorsprung Durch Inspiration’. The gravestone bears the honorific 'professor'. It is generally agreed he would like that.

We can now reveal that, as he lay in her lap and looked into Millie’s eyes, and realized her love for him, his actual last words were ‘Oh. Bugger.’

However, it doesn’t end there. Rumours persist of a clockwork figure, of Brass, Bronze and Gold, which walks the countryside of Albion. Often alone, occasionally in the company of a man called Nelchael. It is said this device bears the unmistakable handiwork of Quinn Smith. Whether this is true, or who this figure is, nobody knows for sure… It is generally agreed he would like that.